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Endowing a Robotic Tutor with Empathic Qualities: Design and Pilot Evaluation

Obaid, Mohammad, Aylett, Ruth, Barendregt, Wolmet, Basedow, Christina, Corrigan, Lee J., Hall, Lynne, Jones, Aidan, Kappas, Arvid, Kuster, Dennis, Paiva, Ana, Papadopoulos, Fotis, Serholt, Sofia and Castellano, Ginevra (2018) Endowing a Robotic Tutor with Empathic Qualities: Design and Pilot Evaluation. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 15 (6). ISSN 0219-8436

Item Type: Article

Abstract

As increasingly more research efforts are geared towards creating robots that can teach and interact with children in educational contexts, it has been speculated that endowing robots with artificial empathy may facilitate learning. In this paper, we provide a back- ground to the concept of empathy, and how it factors into learning. We then present our approach to equipping a robotic tutor with several empathic qualities, describing the technical architecture and its components, a map-reading learning scenario developed for an interactive multitouch table, as well as the pedagogical and empathic strategies devised for the robot. We also describe the results of a pilot study comparing the robotic tutor with these empathic qualities against a version of the tutor without them. The pilot study was performed with 26 school children aged 10-11 at their school. Results revealed that children in the test condition indeed rated the robot as more empathic than children in the control condition. However, as we explored several related measures, such as relational status and learning effect, no other significant differences were found. We further discuss these results and provide insights into future directions.

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Depositing User: Lynne Hall

Identifiers

Item ID: 10074
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219843618500251
ISSN: 0219-8436
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/10074
Official URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijhr

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Lynne Hall: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5090-1980

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 16 Nov 2018 15:31
Last Modified: 18 Dec 2019 16:07

Contributors

Author: Lynne Hall ORCID iD
Author: Mohammad Obaid
Author: Ruth Aylett
Author: Wolmet Barendregt
Author: Christina Basedow
Author: Lee J. Corrigan
Author: Aidan Jones
Author: Arvid Kappas
Author: Dennis Kuster
Author: Ana Paiva
Author: Fotis Papadopoulos
Author: Sofia Serholt
Author: Ginevra Castellano

University Divisions

Faculty of Technology
Faculty of Technology > FOT Executive

Subjects

Computing > Human-Computer Interaction

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